Going Home - Where is That?

Ann ? August 2006

Well, we have experienced first hand what they told us would happen in our missionary pre-field training last year.Where is home?Not real sure.

Texas has been home for both Robert and I for so long ? early elementary school for both of us.And of course, where are sons are (in Dallas) is home but they are growing older and establishing their own homes separate from us.

When we arrived in the States in June we saw Aaron and Ben for the weekend and then they were both off traveling with their jobs.After about 3 weeks in the U.S. this summer we found ourselves talking about ?going home to Krasnodar.?That was neat and weird at the same time.

This can be an unsettling thing for missionaries ? feeling like they don?t have a home, especially for missionary kids.They even have a term for it now, ?3rd culture kids?.They feel like they don?t fit anywhere, but they usually feel the most out-of-place in their ?home? culture.

Friends of ours who work with East-West and have been living in Moscow, but are currently on a temporary ?home assignment? in the states, have a teenage son.Recently someone asked him where home was, to which he replied, ?Wherever I?m not.?

I remember learning the song many years ago when I was new believer??This world is not my home, I?m just a passing through??

I pray that we use this experience of growing deeper in the realization of where our ?real? home is and that we grow in our urgency to take as many people with us to that promised land.

"For our citizenship is in heaven, from which we eagerly wait for a Savior, the Lord Jesus Christ;" Phil 3:20